Avinash Misra, CEO & Co-Founding father of Skan.AI – Interview Sequence

Avinash Misra is the CEO and co-founder of Skan.  Avinash is a lifelong entrepreneur with a confirmed file of taking ventures from seed to liquidity. He has constructed profitable ventures within the enterprise digital transformation house and his final enterprise was acquired by Genpact (NYSE : G). Avinash’s perception for Skan took seed in giant scale Enterprise Course of Transformation initiatives which he has led over the past decade.

Your earlier firm Endeavour Software program Applied sciences was finally acquired by Genpact. What was this firm and what have been a few of the key classes that you simply realized?

This firm was a front-office digital transformation specialist. That’s, it specialised within the construct and deployment of particular applied sciences equivalent to laptop imaginative and prescient, chatbots/ pure language processing (NLP), and enterprise cellular apps to enhance and remodel customer-facing enterprise processes. 

We realized two key classes. First, when expertise is utilized for its sake solely, it creates each technical and course of debt. Second, essentially the most worth is derived when expertise particularly approaches the tip person with empathy and a design-think mindset. 

Might you share the genesis story behind Skan?

“Automation begins when automation fails.” In a single sentence, this was our starting. After we constructed RPA bots for complicated enterprise processes, we repeatedly observed that after a bot was deployed it failed shortly as a result of it didn’t take note of all the nuances, permutation, and exceptions of that enterprise course of. Each time a bot failed, it grew to become yet one more lacking permutation of labor. It was an countless cycle of deployment and failures. 

So, why don’t we all know all of the nuances of enterprise processes?

We don’t know all of the nuances of enterprise processes as a result of all course of discovery is completed by human enterprise analysts who ask the method brokers to explain work. People are spectacularly unreliable in describing issues which have a way of familiarity or recurring and routine. These are sometimes issues they will do properly, however can by no means describe with the wanted accuracy. Therefore, we constructed Skan to watch actual work and perceive that work and the processes, somewhat than interview and doc people.

Skan is partially a course of discovery platform. Might you outline what course of discovery is for our readers?

Course of discovery is a broad time period that refers back to the act of discovering or studying how processes work at an operational or structural stage. That is notably difficult with processes that contain human-system interactions with lots of or 1000’s of employees, dozens of software program functions, and complicated workflows. An ideal instance is the claims administration course of.  

At present, Skan is definitely greater than a course of discovery platform. Skan generates a deep understanding of labor (course of discovery) and offers superior analytics to assist course of house owners and transformation leaders measure, analyze, and enhance KPIs that drive enterprise outcomes such because the buyer expertise, income, and value.  We name this broader functionality: course of Intelligence or the systematic assortment of knowledge and the end-to-end course of and utility of that data to regulate enterprise outcomes or to study, perceive, and make choices. 

Based on a examine carried out by Ernst & Younger, 30% to 50% of automation initiatives fail. Why do you imagine that is so excessive?

Based mostly on working with our prospects, we discover that one of many key obstacles to automation success is lack of visibility into present state of KPIs throughout the lifecycle of automation initiatives. 

As an example, so as to qualify an automation venture, we have to baseline the present state KPIs and construct a enterprise case. Within the experimentation part, we have to determine expertise patterns and outline goal (to-be) KPIs primarily based on present state KPIs. Through the design, develop, take a look at, and operationalization part, we have to align with the basis reason behind the issue to resolve. 

Lastly, within the validation part the place we measure funding payback and advantages realization, we want traceability to the to-be KPIs. So, we see that throughout this complete lifecycle, transparency and traceability to present state KPIs and root causes is required. And, but, in line with Forrester Analysis (2021), solely 16% of organizations say they’ve full visibility into how processes work. It’s no marvel automation initiatives wrestle to ship worth. 

Are you able to clarify what procedures Skan takes to guard the privateness of individuals which might be being monitored and delicate enterprise knowledge?

It is very important observe that we don’t monitor individuals. We solely observe particular components of labor (not the entire display). These components are particular work functions which might be predefined upfront.

That stated, for any functions noticed, all delicate work knowledge is redacted. We even have the power to anonymize the hyperlink between the one that did the job and the method. The names of people working within the course of may be anonymized, too.

Might you focus on how Skan makes use of machine studying and particularly deep studying?

Skan incorporates a number of AI and machine studying algorithms to deal with numerous issues equivalent to anonymizing delicate info (each textual content and picture knowledge), abstracting low-level occasions to enterprise actions, inferring course of graphs, and discovering course of variations.

What are some examples of actionable insights which were gained from this course of?

Skan helps course of house owners and transformation leaders measure, analyze, and enhance KPIs that drive enterprise outcomes. Some instance insights are:

Effectiveness:

• Unit value of manufacturing
• Useful resource (workforce) utilization
• NPS enchancment

Effectivity:

• Automation discovery
• First move charge
• Course of compliance
• Capability (workforce) planning
• Lowered course of variability

What’s your imaginative and prescient for the way forward for course of intelligence?

Our imaginative and prescient for the way forward for course of intelligence is to remodel the way in which individuals work to allow them to enhance productiveness and attain their full potential. 

At present, the worldwide pyramid of labor has a broad base of non-value added duties and a really slim high of value-adding duties. Our imaginative and prescient is for course of discovery to invert this pyramid.

Thanks for the nice interview, readers who want to study extra ought to go to Skan.